“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rob spent the next Saturday afternoon in his studio, as usual, painting and doing other artwork. It was snowing slightly. I was in the front of the apartment doing the weekly housecleaning. Rob’s mind was on some innocuous chore, now forgotten; he may have been applying gesso ground to a series of panels to be used for paintings. With no transition or advance notice, a vision appeared to him. Although it was not exteriorized, it was clear in detail and very vivid. Like other experiences of this nature, it was intrusive, in that it seemed to have no connection with what he was doing or thinking at the time.

It was a fascinating session. Seth told Rob that he’d seen only part of the room, described the rest of it and gave further details about Dick’s English life. The session lasted until 11:15 when Rob, not Seth, got tired, and suggested that we stop for the night. Seth said, Sleepy time is no crime. Now I am no poet, and you know it. Rob laughed, because Seth likes to tease me about my poetry.

In the next session, Seth told Rob that he was doing well and should try the exercise often. The session, the twenty-second, was one of our first spontaneous sessions. (At times, I knew I could have a session, for example, but mentally refused. Two sessions a week were more than sufficient, I thought — I was afraid of going into trance at the drop of a hat.)

Again the mental words — surely not mine — responded. I can’t afford to give you any predictions at this time, for fear that you’ll distort them, and then it would seem that I was to blame.

During all this time the curtains were open. It was not yet quite dark. There were voices and footsteps in the hall, Rob told me later, but I was not bothered at all. In fact, quite without knowing it, I was pacing about, talking as Seth, carrying an unlit cigarette. Finally Seth said, This is a very pleasant little session. For heaven’s sake, Ruburt, get yourself a match. The suspension and suspense is killing me. Will she or won’t she light that cigarette? Please find a match.

Some night we’ll have a party. You can dispense with the notes or use a recorder, and we’ll have a good informal time of it.

It is fashionable in your time to consider man as the product of the brain and an isolated bit of the subconscious, with a few other odds and ends thrown in for good measure. Therefore, with such an unnatural division, it seems to man that he does not know himself.

Then, just as Rob was about to ask how we could really perceive the inner realities, Seth began to discuss the second inner sense, giving us a valuable tool for our subjective dissections. We later discovered, of course, the “inner senses” and “psychological time” had been discussed under different names in many ancient manuscripts. Rob was really impatient to get the session typed up so that he could study the material and put it to use.

Seth began by saying that physical time was a camouflage.

Psychological time belongs to the inner self, that is, to the mind. It is, however, a connective, a portion of the inner senses which we will call, for convenience, the second inner sense … It is a natural pathway, meant to give easy access from the inner to the outer world and back again.

Time to your dreaming self is much like ‘time’ to your waking inner self. The time concept in dreams may seem far different than your conception of time in the waking state when you have your eyes on the clock and are concerned with getting to some destination by, say, 12:15. But it is not so different from time in the waking state when you are sitting alone with your thoughts. Then, I am sure, you will see the similarity between this alone sort of inner psychological time, experienced often in waking hours, and the sense of time experienced often in a dream. …

When Rob typed up the session and I read it, I went around in a daze of wonder. Like many other people, I’d distrusted the “inner” self to a considerable degree, believing that it held only repressed primitive emotions and buried, unsavory characteristics. But without it, we couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning or breathe, much less walk across the floor. Now this seems so obvious that it is almost impossible to remember what a revelation it seemed at the time. The next day, the session inspired me to write the following poem.